A Good Read

The other day, I started cleaning out the boxes of stuff in the basement. These are the boxes left over from the last two times we've moved, and for some reason never quite unpacked everything. Just to put in perspective, the last time we moved was 2002, and before that, 1998. At least one of these boxes had been sealed up for 9 years.

Most of the stuff in the boxes was just crap. A lot of old college papers, some old newpapers that I don't remember why we kept them, and a few odds and ends. God bless the Hefty trash bags, because that's were most of it ended up.

But one box, a fairly small one, yielded up a bit of treasure. It had books. About thirty of them, mostly paperbacks, and some that I had been looking for since the last time we moved. Finding them put me in hog heaven.

Among the books was one of my all-time favorites, The Caine Mutiny. I hadn't read it in years, but I still remember the story. It used to be one of those books that reread every year, just so I don't forget it. The movie was great, too, with Humphrey Bogard as Captain Queeg. Unforgettable.

So the last few nights I've been sitting up on the couch after everyone has gone to bed, and I've been reacquainting myself with a favorite book. Does it get any better than that?

Who Blogs for Fun?

So, I have been keeping this blog for a while, talking about all sorts of things that I do for fun, or have found to be fun, or just plain like, but it never occurred to me to blog about ... blogging! Let's face it, I wouldn't be keeping this blog if it wasn't fun, or if I didn't like it.

So what's fun about it? I mean that question, but only in a semi-serious way.

What's fun about blogging? I'm sitting here, at a computer, throwing my thoughts into the void, and sometimes I even wonder if anyone reads them. The truth is, though, that readership isn't really relevant: I would do this anyway, even if I knew for a fact that no one would ever read it, or ever care.

So why do it?

Well, it's a good way to keep a journal, for starters. And it's a good way to organize some thoughts. I have a private blog, that no one will ever see, where I keep the dark and dirty secrets or the serious ventings and rantings that I know my wife would never like, and I also keep a semi-private blog, where I post pictures of the kids for friends and family to see. And there's this blog. The one that's public.

I keep this one because sometimes, I just need to shout from a rooftop. Maybe what I have to say isn't earth-shaking, shattering news, or even of any particular importance, but we live in a world where it's increasingly hard to say anything, and increasingly hard to get noticed in any way. So maybe this is just my way of bypassing the standard routes.

The internet makes it possible. Anyone can publish virtually anything (which is not always good; look at the rampant anti-semitism on Wikipedia, for example), and that has introduced a new sort of freedom to the freedom of speech.

And maybe that's why I do it.

Nah. I just like to talk.